Ep. 45: The Rainbow-Colored Girl Aira
is the forty-fifth episode of Dengeki Sentai Changeman. Synopsis A naive alien girl is manipulated into unknowing sealing away the power and identity of her childhood friend Hiryuu. Plot A young girl, with her body adorned with rainbow-colored streaks, skips ecstatically across a field after stepping out of an UFO; her name is Aira, and she comments how Earth is still as beautiful as she remembers from many years ago. Accompanying her is a creature called Daros, who appears friendly to her, and uses energetic beams to make the streaks all over her body disappear. Now able to easily blend in with people from Earth, she sets off to find a certain person: Hiryuu Tsurugi. She soon arrives at an EDF base and breaks into it easily, only agreeing to speak with Hiryuu, who is summoned to help with the situation. On his way, however, he is attacked by Daros, who reveals himself to be a Space Beast under the employ of Gozma. Daros uses his energy beams on Tsurugi once he transforms into Dragon, but flees before the Changeman can strike back. Despite his confusion, he proceeds back to the EDF base, where the soldiers are now surrounding Aira. Dragon quickly intervenes to talk to her, but she refuses to believe he is Hiryuu unless he takes off his Change Protect uniform. Dragon, however, finds himself unable to detransform, which leads a disappointed Aira to steal a jeep and run away. While all this is happening, Ahames exposes to Bazoo that what Daros did was extracting the sunlight spectrum from Aira's body (thus removing her rainbow streaks) and passed it on to Dragon who, under the influence of the spectrum, is unable to detransform. Meanwhile, as Dragon is being studied, his teammates note that, being unable to take off his uniform, Hiryuu will be unable to feed, and the more he spends transformed, the greater is the toll on the user's body. Just then, a soldier comes in, informing them of Aira's whereabouts, and Dragon, even severely weakened, steps out to go after her. Aira is having difficulties to commandeer the jeep, when Dragon shows up driving the Change Cruiser, asking her to stop, until Daros and Booba attack him, allowing Aira to escape. The battle does not go too well for Dragon, who is having to hold back and prevent overexertion, until he sees Aira has lost control of her vehicle and is hanging off a cliff. He runs to help her up, just as Super Giluke shows up and blasts him, sending them hurtling to the river below. The two survive, however, and after Dragon manages to bring Aira back to her senses, she recalls a story of when she was a child and first came to Earth, having snuck into a spaceship as a prank: she was starving and picked up a persimmon from a nearby orchard, which led some boys from the neighborhood to chase her and beat her up, until another kid, a young Hiryuu, intervened to protect her. They then started pelting Aira and Tsurugi with rocks, until they fell off a cliff and into a river. When Aira came to, Hiryuu had caught some fish for her to eat and placed a flower in her hair, as it made her look prettier. Touched by his kindness, Aira vowed to come back to see Tsurugi again but, back in the present, she is saddened that she might never have the chance to do so. Dragon, then, places a flower in Aira's hair, and the gesture finally convinces her that he is Hiryuu. Before he can explain why he cannot show her his face, Booba and Daros corner them, and the latter admits that he was using Aira to get close to Dragon and kill him, but now she has no use for them anymore, so they will be sent to hell together. In spite of his weakened condition, Dragon is able to fend off a wave of Hidrers while protecting Aira, but fares badly against Daros. As the Space Beast moves in for the kill, Aira blasts him with a ray gun, which causes him to the sunlight spectrum to return from Dragon's body to her own, allowing him to finally demorph. She runs away to take cover, as the rest of Hiryuu's teammates join him. Feeling renewed, Hiryuu leads his team into an easier fight this time, destroying Daros first with the Power Bazooka, then with the Change Robo's Super Thunderbolt. Later, Hiryuu follows Aira to her ship. She does not want him to come any closer to her due to their different adult physiology. Hiryuu calms her down by again, repeating the same gesture of endearment, and explaining that appearance does not matter when there is a true friendship, and he promises her that his friends will crush Gozma and bring peace to the universe. Aira pledges that, no matter how far apart they are, she will come and see him again someday. Cast * : * : * : * : * : * : *Officer Suzuki: *Officer Shoji: *Officer Watanabe: *Officer Nomoto: *Officer Kikuchi: * : **Star King Bazeu (Voice): * : * : * : * : Guest Cast * : * : **Aira(Child): *Guard: *Boy: *Hiryuu Tsurugi (Child): Notes as an EDF Soldier]] *Aira is portrayed by Youko Nakamura; she will gain a major role next season as Sara in Choushinsei Flashman. **In addition, Yutaka Hirose, who would play the villain Ley Wanda in Flashman, has a cameo appearance as a soldier. DVD releases Dengeki Sentai Changeman Volume 5 features episodes 45-55. http://www.toei-video.co.jp/DVD/sp21/changeman.html References Category:Dengeki Sentai Changeman Category:Sentai episodes Category:Written by Hirohisa Soda